According to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine, the Bitcoin company has unveiled a new money transfer API that will allow individuals and financial institutions to send instant payments to any bank account in Mexico and Brazil in less than a second. This API marks the company’s expansion into international money transfers, with plans to soon expand its services to the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
We’re excited to launch our new Remittances API, enabling instant cross-border payments across all your apps 🚀
With one easy integration, you can send Mexican Pesos 🇲🇽 or Brazilian Reals 🇧🇷 to your local bank account in less than 1 second⚡
More currencies and countries coming soon! https://t.co/jiAeh1NhRF pic.twitter.com/R63Z3mNnb3
— The Bitcoin Company (@theBTCco) March 22, 2024
“Disrupting the remittance market is a key milestone in our roadmap to deliver easy-to-use Bitcoin-based financial services that have always been compelling applications for the Bitcoin network,” said Ben Price, Founder and CEO of The Bitcoin Company. said: “Bitcoin enables payments that are cheap, instant, inclusive and global.”
By leveraging the Bitcoin network, The Bitcoin Company’s remittance API provides a cost-effective alternative to traditional bank rails such as SWIFT, significantly reducing the cost of international remittances. The API communicates with local payment networks in Mexico (SPEI) and Brazil (Pix) to ensure that funds are immediately deposited into the recipient’s bank account.
The remittance markets in Mexico and Brazil have historically relied on expensive services such as Western Union and MoneyGram, which charge high fees. According to the World Bank, the cost of remittances to Mexico and Brazil is 3.01% and 4.59%, respectively, and the average cost of remittances abroad is 6.18%. The Bitcoin Company’s API disrupts this landscape by providing low-cost, instant, 24/7 cross-border payments.
“Cross-border payments as they currently exist have been disrupted,” Price continued. “Traditional money transfer providers like Western Union are taking advantage of the world’s most desperate populations by charging exorbitantly high fees for sending/receiving money. Using the new Remittances API that leverages the Bitcoin network This means that cross-border payments are now a trivial matter. Our plans include expanding to more countries. We offer regions and currencies that will allow us to serve both business and consumer payments. We hope other developers can use this simple “We are excited to enable low-cost, cross-border instant payments in their applications through our API integration.”
This launch is consistent with The Bitcoin Company’s vision to provide easy-to-use Bitcoin-based financial services and build a developer-friendly infrastructure that connects Bitcoin with legacy financial systems. More information about the Remittance API can be found here.